


Pompeii

by LisaDuncansTwin



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: M/M, Song Challenge, Soooo sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 14:42:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LisaDuncansTwin/pseuds/LisaDuncansTwin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Methos' feet are starting to tingle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pompeii

**Author's Note:**

> A lyric wheel challenge from late 1998. Song was This is Pompeii by Dar Williams; lyrics at the end of story.

I always cry in the shower, no where else. The water hides and washes away my tears. He always knows something’s wrong when I take a shower in the middle of the day, unless we’ve been in bed. 

He found me crying there one day. We’d been lovers for a month or so, and it really upset him. It upset him more once he realized what it meant. 

See, I get this tingling in the bottom of my feet when it’s time to move on. It’s always been that way. I feel it in my feet first, and it moves up, overwhelming me until I pack. It doesn’t matter what’s going on or where I am, when the tingling begins, it’s time to leave. Sometimes, something happens after I leave. Once a flood wiped out the village I had lived in. The tingle had helped me avoid one of the biggest natural disasters in the world. 

I had been in Pompeii living the good life. Women, servants, everything a man could want, but then the tingling started, and I had to leave. Mount Vesuvius erupted a month later, killing most of the people I had known. I’m sure that in my travels across the world, the tingling has allowed me to avoid running into Kronos.

The real problem is, I don’t always want to leave when the tingling starts. Like now. We’ve spent the last six months together. They’ve been the best six months of my life. We fight, we makeup, we debate, we laugh, we make love. And now I have to leave. 

I can’t even explain to him why. I don’t understand it. All I know is that I have to leave. I don’t know why or where I’m going. I’m just going. And I can’t ask him to come with me, because this is his home, his world. I just pass through, for brief moments of pleasure, when I can enjoy his company, his security, his stability. I can’t offer him anything like that. I only bring him sadness. In fact, I bet he’s out there, right now, pacing and pouting. He doesn’t know how hard it is for me to leave. He doesn’t know how hard it would be to stay. 

***

I woke up this morning thinking that today was gonna be a great day. I went for my run. I met Joe for lunch. Hell, the sun was even shining. But when I came home and heard the water running and saw the bag on the bed, my day turned to shit. 

He’s leaving again. This has been the longest he’s ever stayed with me. I guess I just fooled myself into thinking he’d never leave. Damn! 

I asked him to explain it to me one time, but he couldn’t. How can he just up and leave when everything is going so great? At least, I think everything has been great. We laugh, we argue, we make love more times a day than I can count. I wish I could get inside his head, know what I can do to help him. To figure out how to make him stay.

It’s my fault! I hold on to him too tightly. I suffocate him. I can’t help myself. He knows I love him, I can’t get enough of him. I need him. I take myself too seriously when he’s not here to point out my flaws. Defects he calls them.

When he’s gone, I wait for him to return. I just pass time until I can feel him again. I think he knows I do that. It’s just more pressure on him, pressure I put on him. Like I’ve made him responsible for my happiness. What did I ever do before him? What will I do without him?

***

I don’t want to go out there and have to face him. I hate saying goodbye to him. I never quite know what to say. I suppose ‘I love you’ is a good place to start, but I feel like I say it all the time, and the more I say it, the less it means. Ah, hell, I’m so screwed up! 

What if I stay? What would happen? Would the world end? I’m just afraid to find out. I’m a survivor. I survive. I move on. I come back to Duncan every time. It’s like he has become my world. I revolve around him. 

I finally leave the safe confines of the bathroom to find Duncan sitting next to my bag. Don’t do this to me. 

***

Don’t do this to me, Methos. Don’t leave me here alone again. I miss you so much when you’re gone. But I don’t say any of those things. I can’t lay that on him. He’s gonna leave, and I’m gonna wait. I guess that’s the way it has to be.

I watch him prepare to leave. He puts on his favorite coat, the black one with the flannel inside. The coat I bought him. He picks up his Ivanhoe, his most trusted friend, and hides it in the coat. 

He slowly walks back to me. His eyes are always so green after he cries, like emeralds fresh from a mine. I try to smile, but I feel my bottom lip quiver, and the truth is revealed. He wraps his arms around me, pulling me close enough to hear his heart beating. I can’t stop the tears as they fall onto the dark coat.

He pulls away, grabs his bag and is out the door. I follow slowly, knowing I have to watch him walk away. Hoping he’ll stop and come back. But he won’t. Hoping he’ll stop and look back. But he won’t do that either. He just walks away and never looks back. 

I lean against the barge, hoping it will give me strength, and watch him walk away. Please stop. Please come back. Please don’t leave me. Please. 

As if by a miracle, he stops. He turns around and looks at me. Time freezes, and I know what he’s asking me. 

I run back inside the barge, frantic. I see the dirty teacups on the coffee table, the unmade bed, the open windows, but I grab my jacket and my katana and slam the door behind me. 

I run to catch up to him--he hasn’t moved. His eyes are golden now, full of love. I could fall into his eyes and drown. 

I look back at the barge, unlocked, virtually abandoned, but it doesn’t matter any more. Nothing matters except Methos. The barge can rot and sink in the Seine. Nothing matters except Methos. 

***

I heard him screaming for me. I couldn’t walk away. My legs refused to obey, like they knew what I had to do. 

Turning to him, asking him to come with me, who knows where, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I can only offer him my love, I hope it’s enough.

I feel my heart practically burst out of my chest when I watched him run to me. He’s leaving everything behind for me. My heart can burst now; I have everything I want. 

I watch him look back at the barge and look also. We’re seeing two different things. He sees his home and everything it means to him. I see everything we shared there. This was where we first became lovers. This was the center of our world.

This was Pompeii. This was our Pompeii.

The end.

 

I was thinking about the woman in a century of peace,  
On a bright mosaic she is washing on her knees,  
And she looks up at the black sky beyond the mountain tall,  
She says, “Oh good, the rain is finally going to fall today.”  
This was Pompeii.

And everyone has memories of the night that melted stone,  
The neighbor’s nightgown, the screaming on the phone,  
And the tired man at the station says, “We can’t tell who’s alive,  
All we ever know is that the tourists survive.”  
”Tra la, tra la,” they say, they say,  
”Let’s go Pompeii.”

And I think about Pompeii when I feel the end is near,  
Just before the rain and every time you disappear,  
And I think about a teacup, suspended and half-served,  
And all the scholars know is that it’s perfectly preserved.  
”Oh, oh,” that’s all, they say,  
”This was Pompeii.”

And as for my own kingdom, not a table leg was charred,  
I simply lost my kingdom ‘cause I held it much too hard.  
Once I had a sadness, the sadness turned to trust,  
The trust turned into ashes and to lawyers and dust,  
A century, a day,  
This was Pompeii.


End file.
